The mioscripting blog

So let’s start our first tuto…. As I mentioned earlier, I will post several tutos in order to help you to customize your device to your own taste.

In this first tuto, I will explain how to upload the files needed for customization from your mio to your PC and how to setup a nice and comfortable workplace.

First of all, you need to read the documentation about your mio! Then connect your mio gps device to the PC with the usb cable and check that you can access your device by sending some pictures or music with the mio transfert tool.

Everything is working….Now, let’s see what’s inside……bad luck, with the mio transfert tool you can only access some folders like the music, picture and contact folders. We need to find a way around, why not trying accessing our mio with a Bluetooth connection? Yeah, it’s working but speed transfer is so slow (try to upload an mp3 and you’ll understand) that’s not a way out.

So let’s see on the net if there is not a genius hacking tool……yes, after having read tons of post, I found this one: “Mio Transfer hack.exe” with this tool, which is a hack of the original version, you can have access all files present on the flash disk of your device (don’t ask for this tool…..search it by yourself ;-).

Honnestly, that’s not the best way to get into the code of your mio, if you don’t already know, your device is a small PDA with windows CE v4.20 with a Samsung ARM processor. So, why not just activate the full Windows CE OS? To do that, just go to this site and follow the instruction…….this site is in French but with a good Google search….. If you really get stuck, leave me a message).

Don’t forget to read all the WARNINGs when doing change on your device, be aware of what you doing and don’t cry if your device doesn’t run anymore after the changes (just do a hard reset, mio is great, but you’ll lose everything done before except on the My Flash Disk). If you have doubts ……don’t do IT.

So….you did it! Now that you have a fully functional windows CE, you have access to Microsoft active sync. That software will ease our hack life…..(drag and drop, you know what I mean!). Install Microsoft Active sync on your PC in order to establish a permanent link with the mio (we gonna need this link… trust me).

Now that we have setup a link to the mio, let’s have a look on the files we need to mod. On the active sync windows click on browse:

 

Go to “My Flash DiskmiomapMioMap” folder and there you’ll find the file that will make all our mio dreams come true J……….. the data.zip file. This is the one we have to take care, and believe me we gonna handle it just like a baby.

On your PC, open your browser and create a dedicate folder (ie c:mio_c710, keep it simple don’t need to go through 15 sub-folders), create a sub-folder c:mio_c710backup and drag & drop the data.zip file in there so we have a backup if we need to go back.

Create a new sub-folder c:mio_c710Skin_dev_v001 and copy another instance of the data.zip in there (this is the one we gonna work on it).

Now, you can either decompress de data.zip and work directly on the decompressed files (but you will need to recompress the all directory every time you want, for testing reasons, upload your file onto the mio. I prefer to open the data.zip file with winrar and open, within winrar the file I want to mod. Just save your changes and winrar will automatically recompress it then drag & drop the data.zip file onto your device with winrar still open (this is really times saving).

 What makes the use of winrar more interesting is that you can do a deep search inside the compressed files which is much more performing than the windows search engine.

So, now that our workplace to mod our mio is ready, the next tuto will be related to the study of the data.zip file and to the concept behind the scripts.

See you on next post.